The Assassin and the Courtesan
by Led Feynman M.D
Summary: The almost-true story of an Assassin Recruit named Laura Boccanera. Based on nearly true events that happened to me. This one is almost my baby.
1. Laura Boccanera leaves Roma for Londra

Guess what guys? I've been playing a _lot_ of _Assassin's Creed_ lately. A lot. That's the main reason I'm so far behind on Road Trip, and... wait, you guys aren't my usual fandom, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Unless you found this story on my profile after finding one of my other stories... Ugh, I'm getting myself all tripped up.

The following tale is a highly embellished version of an absolutely true event that happened to me while I was killing it in _Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood_, which is in my opinion the strongest in the series.

* * *

Laura Boccanera moved through crowds like they weren't even there. Her skills with a crossbow were astonishing. She couldn't leap over a tall building with a single bound, but she could sure as hell climb it in less than a minute.

You see, Laura Boccanera was an Assassin. Though she wasn't born into the Creed like her mentor was, she still embodied the will and determination of her colleagues in the Brotherhood.

Currently, she crouched on a post conveniently set into the top of a church, scanning the Roman countryside.

A horse reared and launched its rider six feet into the air. Laura saw it.

An angry woman chased her husband around, brandishing a broom. Laura smiled in recollection as she watched.

Then, a smooth movement in the general downwardly direction drew her attention. She disengaged herself from the quarrelling couple, and looked down at the movement.

A pidgeon dropped out of the air and perched on top of a pidgeon coop. An Assassin pidgeon coop.

That reminded her. Ezio likely had a new assignment for her. With a graceful leap, she landed harmlessly in a conveniently-placed haystack seventy feet below the conveniently-placed post.

Within her first few days of Assassin training, Laura had asked Ezio who was in charge of making sure there were piles of hay below all tall buildings. Ezio shrugged and said that was the way it had always been. Then he jumped off and Laura watched him sail through the air to the soft landing below.

From the ground, she could barely see the coop. It was tucked behind another building. All the pidgeon coops were in hard-to-reach places, ensuring a citizen never accidentally found out that Venice was under attack by Templars.

Laura approached the coop and made a disgusted face. Pidgeon coops smell really bad. Even Assassin coops.

Inside was several pidgeons, each of them with a small roll of paper tied to their legs. Laura glanced through the notes and found one that read _L.B._ . She gently teased the paper off the bird's leg and unrolled it, expecting either an assassination or guardian contract.

Laura's eyes nearly popped out of her head when she read her mission.

* * *

"I have to go to London?" Laura Boccanera stormed into the Assassin's hideout with her assignment in one hand. However, the room she'd just stormed into was empty, except for the architect, who looked up to see who was screaming.

Ezio wasn't in the room. Laura took a step towards the adjacent room, then quickly turned to the architect. "Is Ezio in here?"

The architect nodded and Laura stormed into the next room. Seeing Ezio hunched over the table studying a map, she once again bellowed, "I have to go to London?"

Ezio turned to see her. There was no way he didn't hear me scream that the first time, Laura thought.

"Oh, Laura. _Si. Londra_." Ezio looked almost releived to be separated from the map.

"But London is... _so far away_," Laura whined. "It will take me weeks to get there."

"Your duty as an _Assassini_ may take you across the globe. The Templars don't function solely in _Italia_." Ezio stood up and stepped toward Laura.

Laura exasperatedly read the contract again. "I... I guess you're right."

"_Bene._" Ezio then turned away slightly. "And at least you get to have sex."

Although Ezio's affair with Caterina Sforza was common knowledge, no one really talked about it. When she'd left for Forli, Ezio had moped inside the headquarters for days, refusing to perform assassinations or assign missions. For the recruits and Templars this was pretty neat, but once Niccolo Machiavelli snapped him out of it, the party was over.

For Laura, this was enough to stop her argument. She looked down at the floor in resignation, then back up. "I'll leave tomorrow morning."

Ezio nodded and sat back down. "Good. Be careful and don't blow your cover. London is too far away to send reinforcements."

Ezio threw Laura a small pouch of money and she left.

* * *

Ever since Claudia Auditore took control of the _Rosa in Fiore_, the place almost always had at least one assassin in the place, whether they were exchanging intelligence with the girls, or... _relaxing_. Hey, Assassin is a stressful career. They need somewhere to blow off steam... and other things.

Laura sat on the side of Adele Algiere's bed, watching her friend scurry around cleaning.

"And then he gets all flustered and he tells me that a pickpocket must have stolen his money. Even though I definitely saw it the night before. I told him 'no, I just saw it', and he started to run. He took off downstairs and tried to run out the door, but _Signorina_ Auditore stopped him in the lobby, she pulled a knife and threatened him. He can't come back to the _Rosa_ any more." Adele was prepairing her room for the evening rush, where dozens of bored adventurous husbands and politicians needed something to occupy their night.

This made Laura smile. Though she'd never met _Signorina_ Auditore, she heard a lot about her from Adele's stories.

"So Laura, what did you come for?" Adele lifted a jar of perfume from her dresser to dust under it.

Laura looked down at her fingers for a few seconds instead of answering. "I'm leaving for London tomorrow morning."

Adele stopped dusting and turned around. "London? In _Inghilterra_?"

"Yes." Laura crossed her arms.

Despite being "common whores", the courtesans were allied with the Assassins, and Adele knew all about the nature of Laura's work. "How long will you be?"

"A month or two. It's for my work."

"I assumed as much." Adele gently sat next to her friend. "I will miss you."

"Thank you. I will miss you too."

Adele nodded silently for a moment. "Have you packed?"

Laura laughed. Adele knew she was awful at packing for trips and preferred to bring a few simple items. "No. I was hoping to do that tonight."

After she glanced around her small room, Adele decided it was clean enough and stood up. "Good luck, Laura. Please be careful."

Laura cleared her throat and took out her wallet. "Adele, one more thing..." She turned around.

"_Si, _Laura?"

"Can I have half an hour?"

The courtesan stared for a fraction of a second, then figured what Laura was asking. "Oh. Of course," she replied, striding over and locking the door.

* * *

Laura didn't usually stay very long after, but this time, she had an excuse: she needed to pack for her trip.

She said a final goodbye to Adele before launching herself out the window to get home.

A ten-minute rooftop jog later, Laura opened the window to her own home and dropped inside.

She chose not to bring her plain white assassin robes; she would be there to hump, not to kill. She did make sure to grab her hidden blade and dagger, in case of emergency. Into her luggage she also threw a random assortment of clothes. Like I said, Laura was really bad at packing.

The Assassin knew that in order to get close to her target, she needed to look entirely unlike a Roman commoner. She didn't have many fancy clothes, just one dress she rarely wore. If the need arose she could use some of Ezio's money to buy another one.

* * *

Ezio wasn't at the Hideout when Laura stopped by early in the morning to say goodbye, although the architect was, so she told him to tell Ezio that she had left.

Finding someone who could take her out of town so early in the morning was a bear, but she found a trader who was willing to take her as far north as Milan. Laura knew it was as good a start as any.

Since it was 1501, the Concorde wasn't to be invented for almost five hundred years. The journey from Rome to London took several weeks and went in stages. First, she rode with the trader from Roma through Firenze and then to Milan. From there, she bought a horse and rode north to the foothills of the Alps. She sold the horse at a loss, then paid a guide to take her through the Swiss Alps to Basel.

It was at this point that she began to rely on her rudimentary grasp of German, as she was approaching the heart of the Holy Roman Empire and the local nationalistic attitude made it rather dangerous to be an Italian there.

Next she took up on a merchant ship on the Rhine, following the river up to the North Sea. From there it was almost a straight shot to the Thames River and London.

* * *

Early life wasn't incredibly kind to Laura. She was the youngest of two sisters and a brother. When her father wasn't drinking or losing his salary to street gamblers, he was often running from the cops for minor offenses like throwing trash at a guard. When Laura was eight her father taught her an introduction to freerunning, her knowledge of which was later augmented after joining the Assassins.

Every few weeks or so her father misstepped and the gaurds captured him. Then the Boccanera family got together and rounded up all of their money, performed odd jobs for minimal pay, and begged on the streets to gather enough money to pay his fine. Then they wouldn't eat for a week.

It seemed her mother was the only responsible one of the family. She worked as hard as she could to keep her family above the bills and other miscellaneous losses her father managed to incur.

When the Borgias took power, the Boccaneras were surprised to find out that yes, their situation could in fact get worse. Several times a week the family was harrassed by Borgia men, demanding fines or taxes or some infringement they usually made up on the spot.

This was really the only part of her life where Laura could remember her father taking care of the family. He reasoned with the guards, distracted them long enough for the family to sneak out, and in one very close call he killed two men that had pushed past him to manhandle his oldest daughter and dumped their bodies is the Tiber.

Laura remembered this clearly because at the time her mother and brothers were out, and her father asked her and her sister to help carry the bodies once it got dark. Looking down at the dead, impotent eyes of the man that had just tried to rape her sister, fifteen year-old Laura remembered thinking that things were going to keep getting worse unless someone did something about the Borgia.

Whereas the guards before Borgia control were simply doing their job and trying to capture a lowly criminal, Borgia guards were disgusting perverted psychopaths who on several occasions tried to kill her father. Laura was shocked to discover that she wasn't shocked at all to get a letter from her mother explaining that her father had been found dead in an alley, his skull smashed in with something resembling a mace and left dead to be discovered by a neighbor.

Laura herself had nearly met her father at the hands of the Borgia guards. While coming home one night over six months ago, she had been accosted and wrongly accused of stealing money from a Captain. Armed with nothing but a small dagger, she defended herself to the point where she was able to grab a hold of one of the men and put the knife on his throat. When she threatened to kill him if they did not release her, they simply laughed and told her they would simply run both of them through and leave them ppinned together.

Laura frequently wondered what institution the Borgia found their guards at.

As the leader drew back to attack, he jerked and fell dead. Then a man in blue robes dropped from the sky, stabbing the faces of the two men standing next to him.

The man turned to face Laura. "Kill him or left him live. It is your choice."

At this point the man she was holding had pissed in his trousers and struggled against her. His eyes flailed between the bodies of his fellow guardsmen and their killer. "_P-please, let me go,_" he stammered. Laura almost expected him to puke in fear.

Laura looked up at her protector, then jerked the guard's head back and tightened her grip on the u, looking directly into his eyes. "Only if you promise to leave _Roma_. Forever. And never return." Both the guard and the man in front of her nodded.

"Of course. Please, let me go. I promise."

In an act of mercy, Laura released her grip on the guard and let him stagger a few feet away. In an act of treachery, the guard quickly reached down, grabbed an abandoned sword and tried to attack the man in blue by surprise.

In an act of skill, the man in blue robes deflected the attack, pierced the bottom of the guard's chin with a blade hidden on his wrist, and kicked him in the testicles.

The man in blue robes approached her. "_The liberation of Roma has begun,_" he said, and those words resonated with Laura until her dying breath.

* * *

"_Fräulein_, we have arrived in London," a deckhand called to Laura as she sat in the hold of a cargo vessel docked on the Thames River.

* * *

Wham, Bam, thank you mam. This one's for Lady Luly.


	2. Laura Boccanera returns to Roma

_Aaaaare you gonna take me home tonight?_

_Ooooooh, down beside that red fire light?_

_Aaaaare you gonna let it all hang out?_

_Fat-bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go 'round!_

* * *

Completely unrelated to the above lyrics, when Laura wanted to, she could look like a real knock-out.

Silky blonde hair went just below her shoulders, but she wore her hood so often she often forgot she even had hair. Accented by her lovely dress, her breasts were...

Well it's really hard to fuck up with breasts isn't it?

Blood-red lips and pale skin, the height of English beauty: check. Exotic and sultry Italian accent: check. Laura checked herself out in the mirror one last time before going out. She grinned at her reflection, adjusted her dress and left the room.

All there was left to do was to fuck the senator's wife.

* * *

It turns out that the wives of rich politicians are bored. And boredom leads to adventure. Which was exactly what Laura had come all this way to do: have a romp in the hay with Lilith Mason, the wife of a senator. His name isn't important.

Laura had followed Lilith around London, watching her exploits and studying her habits. She appeared to frequent different shops down a particular road in the main city; Laura noted that most of these shops were inhabited by a plethora of teenage girls and young women.

Lilith was scouting. It was one of these places that Laura decided she would seduce her.

The next day Laura met and introduced herself to Lilith. Within three days they were having sex on Lilith and her husband's own bed.

Lilith either didn't notice or didn't care about the volume of questions Laura asked her: the activities of her husband, what the government was doing, different legislature being considered, things like that.

* * *

When Laura arrived in London, the first thing she did was find the Assassin headquarters based on the instructions Ezio had given her. The English Assassins had never been very strong, and their headquarters was the basement of a tavern called The Just Eagle. Their entire membership was about six men and the leader was an elderly man named Jonathan Hawthorn, without an E.

The Assassins didn't have much of a presence in London, which didn't really make a difference because neither did the Templars. The problem was, with Templar power rising in Rome, Templars all over Europe were beginning to gain strength. And being the only major European power without any major Assassin presence, England was directly in line to be subjugated by the Templars.

Laura had been taught all this while nursing an extremely bitter English beer in the basement of The Just Eagle. After the briefing she was given a room to stay in upstairs and a set of English Assassin robes.

The other assassins were astonished to find that Laura hadn't brought her robes. She explained that she felt they wouldnt be necessary given the nature of her mission. Jonathan Hawthorn then explained that Assassins were expected to maintain an appearance, even when they weren't doing traditional Assassin duties.

* * *

Laura did her duty and courted Lilith Mason for almost four weeks. She gained valuable information on the whereabouts of English Templars. When she felt she knew enough, she told Lilith that her research was complete (She said she'd been studying the fauna of urban London for a book. Lilith didn't care in the slightest.)

"But so soon? It has only been a small few weeks." Lilith caressed the side of Laura's face.

She pulled away slightly and placed her hands on Lilith's shoulders."I am sorry, _fragolina_. I must return to my publisher with a manuscript by then end of the month."

Lilith the Needy Bitch began to neck Laura heavily. "Do promise you'll write."

"Of course..." Laura kissed her one last time then began to climb out the window.

* * *

...Of course Laura had no intention of actually writing her. As soon as she was back in _Roma_ she would likely make something up about being spied on and how it wasn't wise to communicate at this time. Then she would say a few words in Italian, which made Lilith melt, and never speak to her again.

The journey home was longer because now they were going _up_ the Rhine, but this was slightly balance by the fact that crossing the Alps in late spring is slightly faster than crossing in early spring.

She arrived to Rome tired and hungry on Saturday night. Almost as soon as the cart stopped she thanked the traveller, took her bag, and raced off home.

Her intention was to unpack, then go to the Hideout and deliver her findings to Ezio. Unfortunately for her plan, someone was in her flat.

When she noticed her lamp was on and her things rearranged, she dropped her bag, drew her knife, and called out. "Hello? Who's here."

Then a very sheepish looking Adele opened her closet door and leaned out. "_Salute_ Laura. I didn't expect you to be home so soon."

Laura paused for a beat then went forward to hug her friend. "It's been so long... how are things?"

"Good. Nothing unusual..." Adele looked around Laura's room.

Laura laughed. "What were you doing in my room?"

Adele took a step away. "I was cleaning it for you, for when you got home."

There was junk strewn all around Laura's flat. Clothes, papers, and varying Assassin's gear laid on her floor, table, and dresser. "You... haven't done a very good job."

"Well I just started right before you walked in." Adele nudged a discarded shirt on the floor with her foot.

Laura had been travelling for the past week and a half and was tired and wanted a bath and something to eat. However, Adele's tight clothing was making it really hard to remember that she was starving and needed to report to Ezio soon.

She'd always thought that Adele looked sexy with her hair down, even though she wore it up for work.

After careful planning and assessing of the situation, Laura walked across the room, grabbed Adele tightly, and began kissing her intensely.

She thought it was ironic that after four weeks of overseas debauchery, the first thing she wanted to do when she got back home was fuck her best friend's brain out.

* * *

Laura crawled off the sweaty mass of sex the two had become and laid next to Adele, panting. If she thought she was tired before, she didn't know what this was. She glanced over at Adele, who was writhing slightly, biting her lip and not making a sound.

They'd had sex plenty of times, though Laura didn't recall it being this intense before. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, she figured.

After a moment, Adele came down enough to form coherent sentences. They laid still for a second. Then Laura reached over and fumbled for her wallet.

"I'm sorry, I just... something just came over me. I think I have some..."

"No," Adele gasped, throwing a hand on Laura's hip. "I should be paying you for that. Call it a, uh... welcome home gift..."

"...Are you sure?" Laura had never _not_ paid Adele for sex before. It felt weird, like she'd stolen it.

"Yes. I'm off the clock."

Wait, they were having sex on their own time, for pleasure, without paying... did this mean they were a couple?

Laura shook her head and decided against thinking about it. Her head was about to explode.

Ezio could wait. It's not like she didn't have a good reason.

* * *

"Buongiorno, Laura. I hope you enjoyed London?" The morning after she returned Laura had been lucky to find Ezio in the hideout. He had been talking to Machiavelli when she came in so she waited patiently a few meters away. When he finished and Machiavelli was walking away he asked her if she enjoyed London.

"I certainly did, Ser Ezio," Laura replied brashly, responding to his attitude. She watched Machiavelli shake his head as he walked out of the hideout.

And then suddenly Ezio crossed his arms and was all business. "What did you learn?"

Laura snapped to attention. "The Templars are only organizing themselves in _Inghilterra_. Most of their Parliament is friendly to the Templars, but I couldn't find any evidence of a major conspiracy."

"Mmh hm. Couldn't find or didn't look?" Ezio said with a wink.

"Believe me _Messere_, as much time as I spent with Lilith I spent looking for information in her house. I even snuck into Parliament while it was in session. Nothing about Templars."

Ezio nodded thoughtfully and turned to look at the chalkboard on the wall. There was a similar slate in the _Rosa in Fiore_. "This is good. We can focus on _Italia_ for the moment." He then turned to Laura. "Did you meet the English Assassins?"

She swallowed and glanced away briefely. "Yes. All of them."

"I know their numbers are small. Did you perhaps mention to them about recruiting new members?"

Laura quickly looked back up. "Actually, I did, just before I left."

The sound of the tunnel entrance squeaking open startled both of them. They glared down the hallway until another recruit, Mino Ricoveri, came around the corner.

Because the concept of recruiting Assassins instead of waiting for them to be conceived was only recently revisited, there were only a few Assassins in Roma. Of those sixteen, Laura Boccanera and Mino Ricoveri were constantly wrestling each other for the number one spot.

Mino nodded politely at Laura then turned to Ezio. "Messere, may I have a moment to speak with you?"

Ezio glanced over at Laura quickly. "You probably would like a few days to relax. There will be an assignment for you here when you are ready for it. Dissmissed."

Laura bowed before she left. "Ciao, Signore."

* * *

In the following weeks, Laura and Mino worked together more and more frequently. Both of them suspected it was a plot by Ezio to promote competition between them, but neither said anything because each of them figured the other knew it. They spent a week in Venezia, killed a Templar priest, got in some swordfights, drank heavily and returned to Roma for their assignments.

Laura's Assassin robes were dyed Venetian Azule, and Mino's green. Since Ezio's robes were blue too, they assumed it was favoritism on his part.

Days passed on. One Thursday Mino was assigned to kill several corrupt monks before they returned to their monastery. He was able to kill three of them, but the other two escaped and fled down a side alley. Luckily for Mino, Laura happened to be freerunning across rooftops when she spotted two monks running from him. She was able to drop down and assassinate them before they got away.

Mino jogged closer. "Ah, Laura, thank you so much... Ezio would have killed me if they'd gotten away."

"Any time. Who were they?" Laura dragged the bodies upright against the wall.

"Eh, just corrupt monks. Accepting bribes, molesting children, you know."

"I see. Well, I will see you around, Mino." With barely a running start, Laura began to climb up the wall.

"Hey, wait!" Mino cried with a slight chuckle. "Where are you going anyway?"

Laura kept climbing. "To a friend's. Bye."

In all reality, Laura was spending a lot of time with Adele. After their weird relationship-redefining night a few weeks ago, Laura had been skeptical about whether they could even continue... being friends. However, Adele seemed to want more. Any time she had a few free hours, she would either find Laura or expect Laura to come to her.

To Laura, this was new and unfamiliar. Her relationship with her father never really prepared her for long-term relationships, and pretty much all of her relationships fell into a single pattern.

Hello...let's fuck...goodbye.

Additionally, her high-stress job often kept her out at odd hours and she often came home and woke up on the floor less than a meter from her bedroll, wearing her robes. Laura doubted she could actually maintain a real adult relationship.

All of this made it more shocking how much her stomach churned and her heart fluttered when she knocked on Adele's window and saw her face.

* * *

Well then I guess I'll need three chapters. Okay then.


	3. Laura Boccanera meets Fate

Things are weird.

That's not a commentary on the socio-economic state of Central Italy during the early sixteenth century; that's a universal constant that our space-fairing descendants will need to deal with, even more so when we evolve out of our physical bodies and download ourselves into computers. But I digress.

By the time most of Roma was barely tumbling out of bed, Laura was already reading assignments and lurking the streets. She was a morning person like that.

Fucking morning people.

Whenever she slept, Adele transfigured into an octopus and escaping her grasp was an elaborate activity that took up to half an hour and a trained locksmith. Though Laura like the comfort and security of a seemingly endless net of arms, she didn't want to wake up her mate before the sun was even visible.

After several minutes of stealthy disengagement of arms and legs, Laura managed to free herself and rolled out of the bed, landing on the floor with barely a sound.

Silent.

She quickly began searching the room for her robes, hoping to be at the hideout before it was light. Months of training couldn't prepare her for the pain associated with kicking her toenail off against the foot of the bed, however, and she collapsed onto the ground, biting her fist to keep from screaming.

Adele didn't even stir.

Since it would probably be a couple of minutes before she could walk without screaming, and since her foot felt dry and blood-free anyway, Laura decided to lay on the ground for a bit and just not move. Adele breathed quietly on her bed. Wind tugged gently on the windowsill.

Laura got it together and pulled herself up to her feet (foot) and continued searching for her clothes.

There was a soft rustling coming from where Laura assumed the wall was. "Mmm. You leaving?"

That's not a wall, that's the bed, Laura thought. "_Si._ Go back to sleep, _mia bella_." She pulled on one boot.

"Mmm..."

A couple of minutes later, just as Laura was getting ready to dive out the window, Adele mumbled something incoherent, then something coherent. "_Ti amo, patatina_."

Laura stopped cold for a few seconds. Her fingers gripped the window frame, relaxed, then tightened again.

Then she let go and walked to the bed. She climbed onto it until she was kneeling over Adele's body. In the unbelievably dim light, she could just barely make out the distinction between Adele's dark hair and her skin. Relying on touch to guide her, Laura reached down, put her hand on her friend's shoulder, rolled her onto her back, and bent down and kissed her.

The kiss went on for what seemed like several minutes. In reality it was probably only ten seconds or so, but to Laura it felt like it went on forever. They parted faces and Laura searched desperately for Adele's eyes in the darkness so she could look at something. "_Ti amo anch'io._"

And then Laura climbed off the bed and went to the window, glancing back one last time before sailing out the window.

* * *

For the past few weeks, Laura struggled to figure out what to call them. "Dating" was too strong and too scary for her, but "Friends with benefits" no longer described the complex feelings of attraction and romance between them. She recently decided to think that "Going out" was a good alternative. It was less dependent, had less romantic connotations, and seemed like the phase that came to mind when Laura thought of their relationship.

She supposed it didn't matter anyway, at least not at the moment.

There weren't any pigeons with her name on them in the coop, which meant her day was basically following Ezio around and hoping he didn't call. Most days he didn't, but occasionally he got into a mess and needed an escape route.

Though at the time Laura was absolutely grateful for Ezio saving her life, she recently realized with disappointment that she actually would have been able to get out of trouble that day. Slit the guard's throat and make for the wall behind her, where a window and ledge would have made a perfect escape route. Sure, she was thankful to have meaning in her life and to be working for a higher cause, but still, she kind of felt like a jerk.

Ezio moved between the city and the countryside a lot, and it was up to her and whoever else wasn't on assignment to follow him undetected. And when he used a horse, Laura had to climb on the smelly beast and follow him on one of those. Stupid horses.

Several meters beneath her feet, a horse nipped at weeds on the street. Ezio was already moving off into tthe fields quickly, and she needed to follow.

Laura hated this part. She couldn't figure out how other people did it so easily. With a deep breath, Laura stepped off the rooftop and plummeted to the horse below.

The landing winded her and she was pretty certain that she would be bow-legged for the rest of her life.

But like I said before, that didn't matter.

Doubled over the pommel, Laura urged the horse forward, to follow Ezio. Citizens leapt out of the way, because Laura couldn't see them and just kind of bowled through them.

Once she was out in the countryside, all Laura had to do was simply stop drawing attention to herself and keep several dozen meters behind Ezio. This was rather easy, as Laura looked unassuming on a horse and being so far away from Ezio allowed her to quickly track his movements and react in case he did something stupid.

Within a few hours, Ezio had been in three sword fights with guards, climbed to the top of the _Colosseo_, assassinated an _extremely_beautiful woman in the ruins of the bathhouse (Laura stopped to admire the corpse and couldn't help but think it a waste), and paid to fix several parts of the old aqueduct.

But when Laura was having trouble paying her landlord, Ezio can't just hand out money.

This would have been just another boring day if Ezio hadn't tried to take on a Borgia tower.

That evening, many months ago, when Ezio handed her directions to the Tiber Island Hideout, she knocked on the door of the facility to find Niccolo Machiavelli waiting to open it for her. Once she was inside, Machiavelli explained what it meant to be an Assassin. He implored that Laura forget her preconceived ideas about them, which was pretty easy to do because she'd never heard of the Assassins before.

He explained that being an Assassin was more than stabbing people until they died, although that was a huge part. Machiavelli told her that being an Assassin was about devotion: devotion to her cause, to her mentor, and to her ideals. To keep fighting for something even though everyone else has fallen simply because you're the only one standing.

For Laura, all this meant was that she couldn't just walk out when she pleased. Which was okay with her, as long as she had something to do during the weekend. However, she shortly learned that devotion meant _every damn day_. She quit her job and became a full-time recruit within a few weeks.

She began to learn the truth about the Assassins and the Templars, the history of their orders, and the story of their millenia-long feud. She knew the Templars wouldn't stop until they were dead or everyone on Earth was enslaved.

She would fight to the death to make sure it was the first one.

Laura knew the idea about the Borgia towers. Ezio swoops in and wastes the Captain, sets the tower on fire, and the surrounding shops open and rejoice. Most of the time, it was as simple as getting above the captain and air-assassinating him. On some days (usually Mondays) it required a swordfight and lots of smelling salts.

Ezio was good at killing the captains. However, this guy was on a horse too. Laura watched from a distance, expecting this to be another routine assassination. Any minute now, Ezio would dismount his horse, get a couple of meters from the captain, pull out his hidden gun or his crossbow, aim at the...

Ezio pulled the captain off his horse and got on it. On the horse. And rode in a large circle before the angry captain slashed his sword at the beast's legs and he was thrown through the air. Laura tensed her body, ready for the whistle that signaled _come help my dumb ass_.

The scene below looked bad, with guards pouring out of- pretty much everywhere. Laura thought she honestly would not be surprised if there were a dozen hidden in the well a couple of meters off.

"Ezio, you idiot," she mumbled with a smirk. He was a big boy, he could handle a few guards.

Wait, not a few, dozens. Seriously, where were they all coming from? There had to be fifty of them down there.

Though Laura knew to only come when Ezio whistled for help, she also knew that he couldn't whistle when he was dead, and he was just absolutely _inundated_.

Then she heard it. A piercing squeal, the sound of a warrior in distress. _Eeeeeeeeeeeeee_.

(That was a whistle by the way.)

Laura snapped into action, urging the beast forward towards the weirdly massive orgy of guards.

Like, no, I don't think you understand exactly how many guards there were.

The captain was getting away. Not today, Laura thought, drawing her sword.

He kept glancing behind him, making sure he wasn't being followed by the crazy guy in blue robes. If he'd only looked ahead of him, he'd have been able to react to the woman in blue robes streaking towards him, a sword drawn.

They met in the middle of a road running perpendicular to their paths. The captain was on Laura's sword side, frantically looking back while urging his men to fight on and not surrender.

How ironic, Laura though, as her sword was thrust through his ribcage with their combined speeds, puncturing his heart and filling his lungs with blood.

Unfortunately for Laura, physics took over and her sword was ripped from her hand as the frightened horse sped off, its rider leaning away at a weird angle.

Oh well. Ezio didn't give her this dagger for nothing.

Laura guided her horse around the thronging mass of guards, picking some of them off with her dagger. They barely noticed her.

Another horse galloping caught Laura's attention. She looked up from stabbing a guard in the back of the neck to see Mino Ricoveri charging towards them, sword drawn and lungs split with a war cry. He slashed several guards wide open before having to tun around and come back.

While she was looking at Mino, a guard noticed Laura on her horse. He reached up, grabbed her leg, and yanked her down. She barely had time to think when there was a knee on her chest and a disgusting smell in her face.

"Oh, you're pretty," the guard snarled. "I think I'll keep you around for a bit."

Fighting a dry heave, Laura swung her left leg up around the man's face and snapped it back down, scissoring his head between her legs. Turning his own blade against him, she wrestled it put of his hand and stabbed his through the chest.

As Laura stood up and shook the dead man's corpse out of her thighs, she realized with dull disappointment that she couldn't actually say that he was the only person ever to die between her legs.

The horse had run off. Good, she didn't want it around her. Already, some guards had noticed her and begun to surround her, swords drawn and angry looking.

"_You think you can defeat the Borgia?_" one of them snarled. Laura raised her hands out slightly. What kind of a question was that? Shaking her head, she picked up her own dagger and dropped into a fighting stance. The circle of guards around her completed itself, and Laura was surrounded.

Just as she resigned to fighting off six guards at once, Mino rode by on his horse and slashed two of them open. They fell backwards and died. Well then, four it was. For now anyway.

One of the men lunged forward, thrusting his sword at Laura's face. She immediately countered, spinning out of the way and slashing his neck arteries open. As he collapsed to the ground, she retained her momentum enough to plunge her dagger into the chest of the guard on the left of him. He died and she moved on to the next one.

The fourth guard collapsed onto the ground and Laura looked at the seven bodies around her. Seriously, how were there so many guards? Just then a few more broke off the main throng surrounding Ezio to challenge her. Again, she went into her stance and prepared to fight.

What she didn't prepare for was Mino coming back and yelling "Laura!" while charging his horse through the guards around her and knocking her to the ground. She rolled along for a few meters and jumped back to her feet. In the chaos, she forgot about the men attacking her and let her guard down. She was quickly rewarded with a sharp pain across her back and a boot kicking her forward.

One of the guards laying on the ground where she was a second ago had a large caved-in portion of his chest, about fifteen centimeters in diameter, or the size of a horse's hoof. Laura smiled; Mino's accident hadn't been a waste.

The guards were still following her as she ran through the small cluster of buildings. No matter, she could jump into that well up ahead and start pulling them in. Or that was the plan, until something hit the back of her foot, stumbling her and sending her into the ground.

There wasn't much she could do against the slashing but just hold her vambrace up and try to block most of it. The guards behind it finally stopped and she jumped up, burying her hidden blade into his stomach. Other men surrounded her; she couldn't find her dagger anywhere. She must have dropped it when she tripped.

One of the guards rushed forward, raising his blade and preparing to deliver a finishing blow. Laura simply reached out and pinned his jaw to his head with her hidden blade.

His sword clattered to the ground. She lunged to grab it, but something fast and painful knocked her hand away. Upon closer inspection it was revealed to be a crossbow bolt. Looking up to find the shooter, Laura saw the crossbowman a few meters behind the others, reloading his weapon.

Laura had been better. She ached all over, her head and legs hurt, and there was a crossbow bolt jutting out from between her radius and ulna. Something wet was running down her forehead, whether it was sweat or blood remained to be seen. Her vision occasionally defocused, and she had to grab at the rib of the well behind her to keep from falling over.

"Keep attacking, men! She will die or surrender soon!" one guard declared with a hearty laugh that the others copied.

If she strained her ears, she could her the sounds of Ezio's fight some distance away. There were four guards in a half-circle in front of her, and one crossbowman behind them. Her left arm felt numb and her right arm wouldn't pronate, due to the bolt. Laura felt sick, and she knew why.

She opened her mouth. The sound of blades and grunts was getting closer. Ezio was fighting his way towards her. Mino was nowhere to be seen. This wasn't good.

Off in the corner of her vision, Ezio burst out from between two buildings, facing back to fight off the guards following him. "If I die... I won't die alone," she announced.

The guards laughed until Laura reached out, plunged her blade into the guard on the far left's chest, and threw him bodily into the crossbowman. In shock, he fired his bolt into the other guy's body before he was knocked over. With an enormous amount of exertion and a shocking amount of pain, she high-kicked the sword out of the next guard's hand, then killed him too. The next man cried out as she kicked him in the knee, splitting the joint and sending him down. His sword, grasped limply in his hand, was quickly yanked out and lodged inside his ribcage.

Wiping what she was sure was blood from her mouth, Laura looked over at the sole guard remaining. His hands were up pitifully, and he lowered himself on his knees.

"Please, _madonna_, please spare me... I'm not like the others..."

Laura remembered the last guard who begged her to let him live. He died with his testicles lodged in his spinal column. "Do you know how to swim?" she asked menacingly.

"I'm... I'm sorry?"

"Can you swim?" Laura found herself short of breath and very dizzy.

"No, I... I never learned." The guard stared at the ground and blinked a lot.

Gently, Laura reached out and took hold of the guard's wrist, pulling him to his feet. "Doesn't matter; this well's dry." With all of her strength, she swung him around and against the rim of the well. His body folded over the lip, and he tumbled down, landing with a splash.

Oh. Guess it wasn't dry. Laura stood for a second, breathing heavily for a second before breathing became too challenging and she leaned over and grabbed her knees.

Waves of nausea battered her, and the world spun constantly. "_Oh, wow,_" she muttered before dropping to her knees. Her side, just below her ribcage on her right was in pain. Probably a muscle cramp.

Ezio was still fighting, though he had reduced his opponents to about ten. He was somewhere behind Laura, who was on all fours next to a well hoping the world would stop spinning.

Her breath catching in her throat, Laura got down even further and rolled onto her back. This was it. She felt it.

She knew the Creed required her to dedicate her life. And she would gladly give it, if it would aid the fight against evil. But never in a million years would she have thought collections would be taken so soon.

Above her, stringy clouds floated through the sky. The sky was beautiful. Whenever she could, Laura like to arrange her assassinations so that her victim could see the sky. Everyone should be able to see the sky before they die.

Laura's fingertips found a wet spot on her robes, right where she felt pain from. She lifted her fingertips to see them red: covered in blood.

Was this- _When had she been stabbed?_ She felt around the wound with her fingers. The hole itself was about four centimeters long and absolutely _gushed_ blood. She couldn't even remember getting injured there.

Early sixteenth-century medical science was strongly lacking, but most people knew that a wound in that particular area was almost always fatal. As it goes, the kidneys see all of the blood in the body pass through them multiple times a day- 180 liters of blood pass through them in 24 hours, or one hundred twenty five milliliters a minute. Severing the renal arteries is almost always fatal.

Now Laura began to gasp. She was going to die. Her left hand groped futily at the dirt, hoping to find perhaps Adele's hand, or her thigh or breast, yet finding only dirt and a dead guard's boot. Laura didn't want that.

Oh, _Adele_. Where was she? She wouldn't want to miss this. Laura realized that her blood loss was making her delusional. She wouldn't see Adele again. Damn it...

Laura's eyes went back up to the sky. Clouds drifted over. her left hand curled up, her right hand covered her wound. She squinted at the clouds. If she was going to die, she may as well look at something nice before she went.

Footsteps tearing across dirt caught her attention. "Laura!" It was Ezio. He had taken care of his attackers and was running to find her. She smiled and called back.

"Ezio!"

The footsteps stopped, then picked back up. Then suddenly Ezio was leaning over her, blocking the sky. His mouth opened in shock.

"Laura... are you alright?" He asked, but he knew the answer.

Laura didn't say anything, because Ezio lifted her hand off the injury to see it. His mouth closed and his jaw clenched.

"Laura, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He found her left hand and picked it up, squeezing it tightly. With his other hand he lifted her head up and allowed her hood to fall off. Her hair fell out around her head.

Ezio knew that there was nothing he could do. His smelling salts would be useless, they only stopped pain, not cured flesh wounds. The best thing would be to make sure she was comfortable.

Words formed in Laura's mind. She needed to tell Ezio.

"Adele... don't let her dwell," she sputtered. Dwell? Of all the last words she could say, dwell wasn't a very good one.

"Adele?" Ezio frowned. He had no idea who she was.

Laura nodded. "Adele. At the _Rosa_."

Suddenly Ezio remembered that Laura seemed to spend a lot of time at the Rosa in Fiore. Claudia would know more. "Alright. I'll tell her. Is there anything else?"

People were stopping to watch the two of them share their last moments. Neither cared. Laura's eyes went up to the sky again, then back to Ezio, then the sky. She swallowed heavily. "I love her. I didn't say it enough. I wish I had said it more." She'd said it earlier that day, but that had been the first time in about a week. Laura's daddy issues made it very hard to say.

"Sure. Of course." Ezio stroked the back of her head with his thumb. He could tell; she was close.

Laura didn't look away from the sky. She swallowed again, then her mouth opened and she blinked and she died.


	4. Fallout

Holy shit, would you look at the time!

Jesus guys, I really am sorry about being dormant for this long. I'm going to blame Doctor Who unequivocally for this one.

Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.

* * *

Ezio breathed silently for a moment, staring down at his Star Recruit's body. Her hood pooled on the ground underneath her head and her blond hair cascaded over Ezio's hand. Brown eyes stared up at the sky.

"Cazzo," he muttered to himself. This was his fault. Stupid, stupid Ezio.

He reached down to close Laura's eyes. "I am sorry oyou had to pay such a price. _Requiescat in pace._"

And so Ezio stood up, leaving Laura's body laid flat on the ground, blood beginning to soak onto the dirt. _Oh shit Mino_.

Ezio did a weird backwards hop for a few steps then turned around and ran into an adjacent alley. Mino was sitting on the ground, his back against the wall and a heavy dagger in his gut. He was nodding his head up and down until Ezio came within a few meters of him, and he looked up with a weak smile. "Hey."

"No..." Ezio shook his head and squatted next to Mino.

"Sorry Ezio. I tried my best." He patted his stomach just above the dagger and winced.

"It's alright, just... relax. Now you can be with your sister."

Mino forrowed his brow in confusion for a second, and then they went up his forehead. "Not... Laura?"

Ezio nodded and glanced away.

Closing his eyes, Mino mumbled, "No... No, she was the good one..."

"...Wait, do you really-" but Mino would never respond.

* * *

Their bodies were carried back to the hideout and placed on side by side tables. The other assassins gathered around to look at the bodies and pay their respects.

Ezio stood between the tables, turning around occasionally to feel a rush of guilt.

"Ser Ezio, what happened?" Raphael Marconi asked, gently touching his mentor's sleeve.

"I... made a mistake," Ezio mumbled. By now Machiavelli had made a rare appearance, and at the worst possible time. He stood across the room and shook his head. Ezio pushed Raphael aside and approached him.

"What mistake have you tumbled into this time, Ezio?" Machiavelli snapped quietly.

Lifting his hands in front of him, Ezio began his story."I was trying to kill a Borgia captain..."

"Let me guess. Things got rough, and you sent two of our finest students to their deaths." Machiavelli crossed his arms and lowered his head, glaring at Ezio.

"Niccolo, you don't understand how many soldiers there were."

"Regardless. Ezio, if you ever get into that much trouble, I would prefer you run away and hide until things cool down than cause the deaths of two fine young Assassins! I thought you were trained in enemy evasion."

"No, Machiavelli, I was in trouble and needed help! I would admit when I need help. If you ever spent time outside of the hideout and in the world you would understand." Ezio motioned broadly, punctuating his statement with a finger pointed at Machiavelli.

Machiavelli shoved his hand aside. "I spent time in the robes. Ezio, these recruits are here to extend our reach across the continent and to help fight the Templars. They are not your personal army."

Having enough, Ezio flung his hands up and walked away to the other room. The architect watched as he sat down at the bench table with his map of Europe on it.

"You know, when I had an arguement with my friends, which, let's face it, happens to all of us at time point or another, instead of thinking about why we were disagreeing, I would stop and think about all the ways we were similar, and all the reasons we were friends in the first place." Ezio looked up to see the architect walking across the room and sitting down at the table bench across from him.

"Go away," Ezio sneered. The architect stood up anand walked back to his place, where he proceeded to inspect the same scroll he'd been reading for the last three years.

* * *

Ezio mulled over the events of the aftenoon as he rested on a bench next to the Parthenon. By now the sun had set and the crescent moon was dimly illuminating the landmark. Ezio remembered the time he climbed through the roof and stolen the clothes of the banker's associate. That was the day he killed Juan Borgia.

He smiled in recollection. That had been a weird party. He'd had an interesting conversation with a courtesan shortly after escaping the party.

Courtesan. Rosa in Fiore. Laura. Adele. Who wawas Adele? Whoever she was Laura had loved her.

A thought occurred to Ezio. He quickly dismissed it, remissed it, then sat still for a couple of seconds and ordered his excitement to diminish.

Claudia would know more. He needed to speak to Claudia. He stood up and walked with a stiff-legged gait for several meters before breaking into a run across the pavilion, scaring away a flock of Night Pigeons.

* * *

The _Rosa in Fiore_ was open much later than its neighboring businesses due to the nature of its... product. Ezio pushed the door open and was assaulted by the heavy powdery odor of the establishment. How people spent very long in here eluded him.

One of the girls approached him and dipped her head briefly. "_Ciao, Ser Ezio._ Do you need to speak to Claudia?"

"Uh... _Si._ Thanks."

Claudia liked to pretend she was very busy being successful with the brothel and had her arms full all the time. However, most of the time the business ran itself and Claudia found herself in her office with nothing to do most of the time. At the moment, she was busy drawing herself being Queen of Italia and making Ezio be her servant. A knocking at her door disturbed her day dreaming (night dreaming? Fantasy.) and she slapped the drawing once before sitting up and announcing, "Come in."

Valerie opened the door and stepped aside as her brother thanked her and walked into her office. "Salute Claudia."

"Hello Ezio." Claudia leaned back. "What do you need now?"

"I need-" Ezio cut himself off in the middle of his sentence because he looked down and spotted the drawing Claudia had spent the last ten minutes doodling. He gingerly picked it up and inspected it while Claudia silently cursed herself for not hiding it under the stack of paper that was right next to it.

"Very... imaginative." Ezio set the picture back down and leaned in. "Right. Do you remember Laura, from this afternoon?"

Claudia squinted. She had indeed met some of Ezio's students. "A recruit of yours?"

"Yes. A very talented one. Well, this afternoon, she was killed by Borgia soldiers-"

"Wait a minute. That was Laura on the table in the hideout?" Claudia stiffened and grasped at the arms of her chair.

Ezio nodded. "Be-"

"Oh no." Claudia leaned into her chair at an angle and held her hand to her mouth.

Ezio frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Adele will be crushed," Claudia said to her fingertips.

"Adele! Who's Adele?"

Claudia leaned in slightly. "Adele is one of my girls. She was very close to Laura. Very... close." She fiddled with the pencil she was using a moment ago.

"How close?" Ezio was now deeply intrigued.

"Close enough for this news to hurt badly. Ezio, I think she should find this out from someone close to her."

Sitting up again, Ezio shook his head. "No. It is my fault. I should tell her." Then he stood up. "Where can I find her?"

"Well she's asleep if you insist on telling her. Buy tomorrow, you can find her... here." Claudia reached up with a scrap of paper in her palm. "She will be working there tomorrow. Take her aside. Ezio, please be gentle."

Ezio left.

* * *

Adele was familiar with the basics of assassinry. She knew that it often kept one out at hours past midnight, or tied up in Florence for three days (literally. Laura told about how she had been captured in _Firense_ and kept for ransom). In fact, Adele didn't even suspect anything was wrong until Ezio pulled her away from her mates and told her the bad news.

Her job involved a lot of being sexy, and she was really good at that. All she did was stand along the road and hope that some horny man (or woman, as was more often than not the case) decides to stop and have a bite.

Just as a teenage boy smiled at them as he passed, a manly voice on her right asked, "Which one of you is Adele Algiere?" Adele herself spun around to see none other than Ezio Auditore himself standing just inside the circle of women.

"I am..." The other girls appeared to be struggling to contain themselves at Ezio's presence. Ezio looked to his right briefly.

"Come with me. We must speak." Ezio stepped away to allow Adele to walk out of the circle of women. Together he led her into another road where he spotted a bench and motioned for her to sit.

Adele watched Ezio look around for a little bit before sighing and sitting up straight. "You were... good friends with Laura Boccanera. Right?"

At the use of the word _friend_, Adele shifted her body on the seat. "S... Si." She herself was struggling to put a name to their relationship.

Ezio sighed again and leaned down, resting his elbows on his knees. "Yesterday afternoon I called Laura to help a fight I was having with Borgia men. She was injured, but fought bravely until she..."

"No."

"I am so sorry."

Shaking her head, Adele slid away from Ezio a few centimeters. "No. She couldn't."

"Adele, I am so very sorry. She sustained heavy injury. She bled to her death."

"No. No, not my _patatina_..." Adele's face collapsed into her hands and she began to weep.

Feeling uncomfortable sitting next to a blubbering mass of a woman (I mean, um, no, not like that), Ezio reached out and began to caress Adele's shoulder. Almost immediately she collapsed into him and cried into his armor.

"_Io l'amavo! E' impossibile, non poteva farmi una cosa del genere!_"

Ezio was now looking directly down at Adele's head. In his hometown, Ezio had been quite experienced in comforting crying women. However, after carefully judging the circumstances, he decided that adding his penis to the situation could only make it worse. Instead he recalled Laura's words to him.

"Just before she..." Ezio paused, gesturing with his hands, "Laura spoke of you."

Adele made a weird gagging noise for a second before looking up; the sound of trying to breathe when crying too hard to breathe. "What did..." and then she started to choke up again.

"She told me that she loved you." Ezio thought that was a good start. Adele stopped making noise for a few seconds, resting her head on his chest plate. "She was worried she didn't say it enough though."

Bringing his left hand up to rub Adele's arm, Ezio began to wonder what other people were thinking. It didn't last very long though, because ten minutes later they were still in the same position. Her head on his chest, his arms on her back. She'd stopped shaking a while ago and Ezio wondered if she'd fallen asleep.

But Adele had not fallen asleep. Far from it. Her mind was awake with the sound of a billion words, most of them "No", "Not" ,and "True". Adele thought about the last time she'd seen Laura, the super dreary morning yesterday when Laura had kicked her toe off against the bed. A few minutes later she'd asked Laura if she was leaving. A few minutes after that she'd told Laura that she meant the world to her and that she loved her. That was when Laura surprised her by climbing on top of the bed and kissing her. And she opened her eyes and saw her dim silhouette and her blonde hair falling onto her face and then she turned around and left through the window.

She remembered the first time they met. In October of the previous year, a lot of the courtesans were being harrassed by some Borgia thugs. One evening in particular, Adele and her mates were being grilled by a man the size of a city block. Just as he reached out to grab her shirt, a figure in white robes dropped from the nearby rooftop, landing on the enormous man, apparently impaling him through the neck with some kind of blade attached to her wrist. She introduced herself as Laura while blushing heavily and left to do "Assassin things" as she'd put it.

Within a day they'd met again, this time as a group of three Borgia soldiers openly discussed which girl they would have their way with and then kill. Did I already mention that Borgia soldiers are sociopaths? Laura came behind one, assassinated him through the stomach, then cut the second one's throat open before he figured out what happened. The third one noticed her killing his coworkers though, and was quick to draw his sword. After a short swordfight, Laura dispatched him.

That night, on her way home, Adele found herself being followed. She'd called out to her stalker to show himself, only to see the blonde assassin from earlier climb down from the rooftop and apologize for following her like that. She'd said it was to make sure no one else gave her any trouble, but Adele could read her body language from a mile away.

Laura walked her back to the _Rosa in Fiore_ and then disappeared into the night.

Adele was shaken back to reality by Ezio's voice. "I've lost people close to me." Opening her eye, she realized she was still under his chest and began to sit up.

She wiped her face off, then turned to Ezio. "Who?"

"Many years ago my family was betrayed by a friend. The Borgia promised him petty things in exchange for falsely accusing us of treason. The guards came to the house and took my father and brothers. I wasn't home at the time, but I returned shortly after they were taken."

"...What did you do?" Adele began to return to a coherent state.

Sitting up, Ezio sighed. "I put on these robes... and I hunted down the man responsible. And I began to work my way up, to find the men on top."

"And did you find them?"

Ezio sniffed and rubbed his nose. "Yes."

As time passed, Adele ran out of tears and became silent, mimicking Ezio's hunched over position on the bench. To passersby they appeared to be an Assassin and a courtesan sitting on a bench mirroring each other.

Adele turned to Ezio suddenly and opened her mouth. "Where... is her body?"

Surprised, Ezio turned to face her. "In the hideout." He sat back up. "Do you want to see her?"

Adele nodded and they stood up and walked to Isola Tiberina.

* * *

When they'd gotten to the hideout Adele stopped cold and refused to go in. When Ezio told her that was fine and she didn't have to, she suddenly became adamant to enter. Ezio let her in, she raced to the bottom of the steps, and then she froze again.

Again, Ezio assured her she didn't need to go in if she didn't want to. She paced around the atrium for a moment, then agreed to see her body.

Together they walked into the mausoleum where Laura and Mino's bodies were. Adele's breath caught when she saw Laura, and she rushed to her side.

Almost immediately she was crying again, grabbing at Laura's clothes and slipping to her knees. Once again, Ezio stepped behind her and put a hand on her.

"_Perché? Perch..._"

* * *

Laura was placed in the mausoleum. Adele ran out of tears and became distant. Ezio was more careful with his recruits.

And the worst part? Life moved on. Adele had scowled in disgust as the sun rose the next morning, indifferent to her pain. Her work schedule had mysteriously cleared up for the next week, and she sat in bed staring at the ceiling and cursing everything in existence that dared to exist. She hated that lamp, and that windowframe, and that church steeple she could see out her window when she laid in bed. She hated Ezio for telling her, and she hated the Borgia for taking her Laura away from her. She hated herself for hating everything.

A week passed and she could no longer find the energy to hate everything. Instead, life was replaced with a dull disinterest.

She stood in the street, with her friends and coworkers, trying to sell themselves, and Adele simply couldn't find the motivation. It had been a week and it still hurt. It was like someone had punctured her chest and sucked her heart out throught a tube. Colors were dimmer, sounds were duller, and everything that happened around her seemed to either throw it in her face or act like it never happened.

So Adele stood in a sidestreet coming off of the busiest street in Rome and not a single thing interested her. Except, of course, a figure in red robes pushing his way through the throng of people.

Ezio.

Adele watched him move through the crowds. She watched him disappear around the corner of the street.

Follow.

Glancing back to her friends, Adele suddenly knew what to do. How to fill this hole.

Quickly, she stepped back towards where Ezio had gone. Slowly, a step at a time, until she turned around and broke into a run.

"Adele?" One of the girls behind her called. But she didn't stop. She ran until she rounded the corner, then searches the crowd. There he was, jumping up a stack of crates placed against the wall. Against her better judgement, she followed him up.

Awkwardly, she leapt onto the first crate, keeping her eyes on Ezio. Taking a breath, she shouted, "Ezio!"

But he didn't turn. He continued to climb with skill while Adele plodded behind him. She got on top of the next crate up, all while shouting Ezio's name.

Mustering her strength, she leapt from the top of the crates to a beam set into the wall, and with the same movement pushed herself higher and landed on a trellis thing. "Ezio!"

It was too late to stop. She grabbed the vertical part of the trellis and hauled herself up, arm over arm. The pain was excruciating, and she was mostly certain she wouldn't make it. But she didn't care.

Above her, she heard footsteps and rustling. Then, "Adele!" Ezio had heard someone calling and turned around to investigate. With pain in her eyes Adele shot up an arm towards Ezio. He knelt down and grabbed her wrist, pulling her with all his strength to the rooftop.

There she collapse onto her hands, gasping for breath. Ezio was standing above her with his arms crossed. "What are you doing, you could have hurt yourself!"

Adele raised her finger, still gasping for breath. A second or two later she looked up at Ezio. "A week ago my heart was broken. I thought I would die. I though I would die even today. I had nothing to live for with Laura gone.

"But Ser Ezio, I know there can be more to live for. I want to have more to live for. Please, Ser Ezio. Please train me to become an Assassin."

* * *

Four chapters and not a single reveiw. Thanks guys.

Initially when this was conceived I thought I could do it in one chapter. Then, once I wrote chapter one, I realized it needed to be two. Then when I wrote chapter two it needed to be three. Well now I'm done.

Credit for translations goes to... some random dude on 4chan. Thanks, Anon.

Hey, it's kind of funny that I'm using Italics to show where the dialogue is Italian.

Anyway thanks for reading, please review and favorite. Much love, Led Feynman M.D..


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